Writer/ Journalist/ Time Traveller

Blog posts
: "reading books"

How's everyone settling into the new year? New rhythm? I still haven't found my stride yet, veering between productivity and major procrastination. I suppose that is the human condition!

So for the moment, am just keeping my promise about book reccos. These were (respectively) the last book I read in 2015 and the first of the sparkly new year!

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

Well, I certainly came to this one late -- it was published in the early 1940s! What a miss. Such a phenomenal, powerful tale, I wholeheartedly recommend it. Even if you think that things have changed a whole lot since the '40s, and you're blithely uninterested in the human experience, or coming of age. This is a transformative book about the human spirit, the will to survive and the quest for a better life. I had no references for Brooklyn from way back when, but yes, it's true, things sure have changed. And yet, urban poverty, the grind for survival, that's something that echoes... and people can empathise if not identify with, an epoch and a continent away.

A huge thanks to Ananya and Ratna for lending me their well-thumbed copy.

The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley

One wonders sometimes about fate and such things. With a surname like the author's perhaps this was inevitably a book (or at least a title!) that was preordained. The story is a marvellous one, transporting the reader to 19th century England and Japan -- I did have to keep flipping pages to keep track of the dates of different chapters (so thank goodness I was reading a physical book, not a Kindle version this time).

The characters are superbly interesting and the story itself -- of clairvoyance and a police investigation, of racism and an immigrant experience, of loneliness and the hum-drum we so quickly let ourselves get sucked into -- was captivating. I wasn't entirely convinced by one plot point towards the end, but the ending itself perhaps was... inevitable. Let me know if this one catches your fancy.

A big thanks to Pallavi for discerning that I was the reader for this one, and lending it to me.

Having lost track of what I'm meant to be reading next, I will leave you with this, which appeared in Scroll on the last day of the last year.

Do let me know what you think, and here's wishing you a fabulous adventure-filled new year. Don't forget to stop by with your comments on what you're reading, or what you're waiting for.

Three novels and an investigation to remember the year for

It’s hard to shortlist the best books of any given year, but in the interests of a curated, well-rounded list of wonderful Indian books published in English, here’s a closer look at what I enjoyed reading this past year. It’s a very subjective list, as any readers’ list is bound to be.

Indian publishing being what is, and our jobs being what they are in the media, I have also had the great good fortune of meeting all the writers on this list. Their work more than speaks for itself, and I am delighted to recount that the reading relationships also survived the real-life encounters intact. (It isn’t always the case, but that’s another story!)

She Will Build Him a City, Raj Kamal Jha
One of my favourite books this year. Many things about this book took my breath away, but what has really stayed with me is the story of a fundamental, powerful love – the mother towards her taciturn daughter, who has suffered beyond anything she can imagine. The giants that the daughter imagines being as a child – those giants aren’t just a comfort to the mother, but balm to the reader’s soul. I still find them comforting!

All of this is against the backdrop of a violent plot, which shines a mirror on a darker, more twisted urban reality than one we usually want to contemplate, morning news aside. The Metro plays a pivotal role in a story which tracks the changing face of a city that seems to be crumbling around us, its fabric rent by all kinds of brutalities. I may never take a Metro ride in quite the same way again… I plan to closely observe the brooding, quieter passengers, so consider this fair warning! The power of the story apart, there is so much beating heart in this one....